Neil Haven's "Who Killed Santa?" - being staged here for the fourth time - is among the final holiday shows to open in Milwaukee.

That's no accident. It's when we've already had one too many Christmas cookies that we're primed for the good time this show delivers, as it fosters sympathy for whoever stabbed Santa with a sharpened candy cane.

This Santa - once again played by Bo Johnson - has it coming.

When we first see him, Santa is already drunk, even before his first Christmas party guest arrives.

That would be Frosty, a rod puppet handled by Nate Press, in a show where the four characters played by Johnson are the only full-fledged humans.

Frosty is soon joined by a Tiny Tim (Amy Geyser) obsessed with losing his virginity, a Rudolph (Brittany McDonald) whose sexuality is ambiguous, a grungy drummer boy named Steve (Rich Pendzich) and a drummer girl named Chastity (Liz Shipe), although chaste she isn't - any more than this show is appropriate for kids.

When Santa isn't mauling Chastity, he is hastening his own doom by asking Frosty to pull cookies out of the oven, displaying his rampant homophobia and insulting Tiny Tim's manhood.

While these cuddly puppets accuse each other of murder through raunchy sendups of holiday tunes, we're never actually told who killed Santa. Late in the show, three "elves" chosen from the audience mull over what they've seen and make that call, triggering one of four alternative endings.

But even if Johnson's Santa weren't such an equal opportunity offender, the motley crew of losers gathered around him might eventually have worked up the nerve to do him in.

Each of the four suspects has spent far too long as either a marginal figure in a larger Christmas narrative (Tim, Steve) or as an often put-upon underdog in their own (Rudolph, Frosty). True to the first Christmas story, they collectively give the last a chance to be first - turning the world upside down by allowing the puppets to pull the strings, while making their master dance.

In addition to Johnson, the real masters here are the puppeteers who bring these characters to life.

Press' Frosty is as lovable, and infinitely more dimwitted, than the original; it took an elfin jury as twisted as this play to pin the crime on him during Sunday night's performance.

Also true to prototype, McDonald's Rudolph can be vulnerable - at least before morphing into a boisterous drunk with an improbable story you must hear for yourself.

Shipe's Chastity retains her innocence even as she flouts her sexuality; Geyser's smitten Tiny Tim does the same, although he talks a good game through Geyser's cockneyfied accent.

Even the edgy Steve is eventually revealed as just another kid whom Santa has disappointed - true to a show that generates humor from start to finish by gleefully exposing the disconnect between the Christmas we were promised and the one we usually get, under the tree and in everyday life.

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Keep up with the art scene and trends in urban design with art and architecture critic Mary Louise Schumacher. Every week, you'll get the latest reviews, musings on architecture and her picks for what to do on the weekends.